Analytics on my mind

"It is way past midnight.
And I couldn't get any sleep. 
Cause Analytics was on top of my mind."
Sleep caused that pithy poem. But it is really true. It all started about 4 weeks back when someone asked me to suggest a topic for presenting in a conference. I suggested "Analytics for media devices" and was promptly asked to present it at an embedded developer's conference. The topic was relevant to my work of course. But I hadn't really thought through when I suggested it. By the time I prepared my material for it,  I realized that 40 minutes was too short to cover the topic at any depth.
I did try my best.  But I think I may have fell short of really helping everyone understand what it really means. Hence this blog post.  I may not share this poat with a vast audience.  But I need to write this down somewhere.
"Smart devices", "intelligent devices", "Self healing networks", etc are terms that you hear every where now. But most of the explanation around this so called "smartness" revolves around a lot of hype about Android,  smart phones, cloud computing, big data, etc. Every one seems to have forgotten "analytics" in the midst of that. That is what actually brings intelligence to these devices. Almost all the devices that are termed as smart and intelligent actually has this statistical science as the centre piece.
A question that was asked their was how is it relevant to embedded developers? It is... very!   When you are building smart devices, it is important to understand the science behind it. And to utilize it for building smarter devices, over the entire product life cycle. I am not sure whether it is really obvious only to me. So if you do come across this post and you have an opinion, do post! For details on my presentation,  you can always go to the embedded developer's conference,  bangalore may 2013, website.

And then the new year came!

As 2013 starts, I was thinking of about the year past, and of course, making my new year resolutions. Last year proved to be a mix of good and bad, with things getting evened out.
The new little one in the family came in 2012, but I also had to stay in Bangalore without much chance of spending time with her. I had to travel a lot, but then a lot of travel involved visiting family. Overall a year that was spend mostly on the road and alone.
Lots of really sad incidents too, especially nearing the end of 2012, the school shooting, the Delhi gang-rape, SRT's retirement, etc. It really looked like the world was ending on some level. I hope that 2013 is better!

As for new year resolutions, I did make a list of usual suspects. Although the one thing that I did add, is to become a bit more sociable and chivalrous this year. Hmm.. there is one more! I think I will start on that book I had been thinking about for a long, long time. Atleast I should write more! God knows I write little, as it is. I did buy a couple of notebooks and a pen with the intention of writing in it. I started scribbling on it and realized that I am woefully out of touch with writing. I need a keyboard to form a sentence. The good part is that it forced me to think about what I am writing before I even put pen on paper, since there was not much chance of changing it without making it messier.

Alright then, see you later. Have to get back to writing another design document! *sigh*! When will I get back to writing code?!